Anatomie de l'elégance

Grey Gardens

Dovima the Divine

In Praise of Silence

Gerald & Sara Murphy

Our Lady of the Ladle

Fashionably Snowed

A Life of Hats

Pantheon of Aesthetes

Sir or Madam?

Joyce Tenneson

Asaf Ben Zvi

Eugene Gabritschevsky

Larry Abramson

Will Cotton

Dietmar Busse

Maligned

Have You No Shame

Eric Baker on Design

As I bounce around online looking for images I always look for the extraordinary, the esoteric, the naive, and the emblematic of a time; works that are not the pieces we often see in design history books.

Just as a map helps us find our way and shows us where we are, looking at design from years past helps us better understand the trajectory contemporary design has taken. DesignObserver.

Invincible Summer

The Thoughtful Traveler

Poires de Vacances

Fawning for Fame

Inhabit

Peter Lippmann

Words, Wars, Weddings

Past Imperfect

Swoon Worthy

The Excellence of Habit

Irving Penn

The Epitome of Grace

Mad About Hats

The novelist Alison Lurie wrote:
“Whatever is worn on the head is a sign of the mind beneath it.”

Stephen Jones, the greatest milliner of his generation, disagrees.

“Whatever is worn on the head is a sign of what a person would like to be."

Cecil Beaton

Cocktail Hour

A Bow Unbent

Solitary Walking

Desired Things

Patricia Gray

Post Wisdom

Reflections

“The golden moments
in the stream of life
rush past us
and we see nothing
but sand.

The angels
come to visit us,
and we only know them
when they are gone.”

NOIR ET BLANC

Bert Stern

George Hoyningen-Huene

Luc Dratwa

Horst P. Horst

Richard Avedon

Peter Lindbergh

Lillian Bassman

Mary Ellen Mark

Edward Steichen

Eudora Welty

Michael Magill

Michael Kenna

Unexplained Absences

L'Incident de Chanel

“I’d Rather Go Naked
Than Wear Fake Chanel”

Following her counterfeit faux pas, the culture’s rebellious “bad girl” Courtney Love has been granted a reprieve by Karl Lagerfeld’s court. Fortunately, the iconic rock star is now decidedly back in fashion.

EX LIBRIS

The Age of Innocence

In this classic novel of old New York,
Edith Wharton recreates the city
of her girlhood in the 1870s.
The Arion edition has been illustrated
with photographs of the actual settings
of the story.

“Truly a thing of beauty”
according to Forbes magazine,
this edition celebrates a classic of American literature.
The book has a special status
as an affectionate record
of the streets and buildings
of New York City.
At every moment of the novel
the reader knows where the characters are,
walking down a particular street,
standing in front of a certain address,
looking out the window of a
familiar room.

The Arion Press edition
is illustrated with images
of the novel's actual setting,
as they are today,
captured by noted photographer Stephen Shore
who brought to this project
a personal knowledge
of the historic buildings and streets
that made up Wharton's New York world.

New York Times art critic
Michael Kimmelman raved:
"The work’s laconic eloquence
speaks of an era and a nation."

The Kindle

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon's sickly serene Self Portrait 1971 is a refracted faceted face akin to some of Paul Cézanne's self-portraits which are reminiscent of cut precious gem stones reflecting light. Bacon painted with a very dry brush giving the sensation of a granular, grainy effect.

The melancholia mood is of a man melting before you: a disturbing image of a disturbed man in a disturbed century. This is one of the last great self-portraits Bacon painted before he went off the rails and went back into to the lazy worn grooves of inane illustration.

Wallace Berman

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